Forest research makes UBC professor a Hollywood star

Duration: 01:48 

A UBC professor is going to "Hollywood" as a result of what she's learned about our forests and as Emad Agahi reports, her research is especially timely given the ongoing old-growth protests on Vancouver Island.

Manatees are dying in droves this year. Here's why the die-offs spell trouble for Florida

By Scottie Andrew, CNN 7

Despite their portly frame and inherent meekness, Florida's manatees are survivors

Paul Rovere/Getty Images Florida's beloved manatee is having a devastating year. More than 749 manatees have died since the start of 2021, a number some longtime advocates fear could grow to over 1,000.

When power plants began popping up along Florida's East and West coasts, manatees learned to follow the flow of the unseasonably warm water.

When boats with sharp motors increasingly flooded their habitats, they learned how to live with debilitating injuries, or tried to.

And when their favorite source of food began to disappear when toxic algae infested the water, they learned to eat less, often at the cost of their health.

Their gentle nature belies a deceptive resilience. Unathletic as they may seem -- they tip the scales at around half a ton -- they're built to endure.

 John Raoux/AP The Indian River Lagoon, pictured here in 2017, is in extreme environmental distress, and it's impacting the lives of hundresds of manatees that live there.

But how much more can one species take?

Decades of environmental stress culminated this year in one of the worst manatee die-offs in recent history: As of May 21, at least 749 manatees have died in Florida in 2021, in what the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has called an unusual mortality event, or UME.

Manatee advocates who've sounded the alarm for years saw it coming.

"Manatees are literally that sentinel species," says Patrick Rose, executive director of the Save the Manatee Club, a 40-year-old nonprofit co-founded by Jimmy Buffet. "They're warning us of what else is going to come if we don't do a better job while there's still time to do something about it. If we don't, our own lives will suffer."

Florida, the third-most populous state in the US and still growing, stands to lose more than its state marine mammal if manatees go extinct. The same issues that have caused their mass deaths are disrupting freshwater and saltwater sanctuaries, killing off fish and other species and mucking up the water that millions rely on for their livelihoods. Florida beaches are now as well known for red tide as they are for pristine white sand and watercolor sunsets.

© Courtesy Sea & Shoreline Sea & Shoreline farms seagrass. It then plants the grasses underwater, protects them with a cage and maintains their new habitat until they're strong enough to grow on their own.

Rose thinks around 1,000 manatees could wind up dead by the end of the year. If manatees continue to die at such a rate, with an estimated 7,500 animals left in the wild (before factoring in this year's deaths), it could be only a matter of years left to save them -- and clean up Florida's water.

© Courtesy Save the Manatee Club When manatees are malnourished, they can lose weight toward the back of their heads, giving their face a distinct peanut-like shape.


A sea of problems faces manatees

West Indian manatees had been on the mend for many years before their fortunes changed. Their recovery from near-extinction in the 1970s to a population over 7,000 was heralded as a victory for conservation. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, in a decision that proved controversial, even downlisted the West Indian manatee from endangered to threatened in 2017 due to the major population gains.

But problems had been bubbling below the surface for decades, and in 2021 it seems they've boiled over. The stressors facing manatees are numerous and entwined, and one can't be conquered without addressing the other, said Michael Walsh, a clinical associate professor at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine who specializes in aquatic animal health.

The trouble, Walsh says, begins in the water.

When nutrients from wastewater or runoff containing fertilizers, microplastics or toxic chemicals leach into a manatee's marine habitat -- whether freshwater or saltwater -- they can throw off the balance of the water and cause harmful algae blooms to form.

 Greg Lovett/Palm Beach Post/USA Today Network Manatees crowd together near the warm-water outflows from Florida Power & Light's plant in Riviera Beach, Florida, in February.

The blooms blanket the surface of the water and shade out the seagrasses underwater that rely on the sun to survive, killing the grasses.

The seagrasses that survive the malevolent blooms are then overgrazed by manatees whose sources of food have shrunk, so the plants can't quickly regrow and continue to feed the manatees, Walsh said.

And when seagrasses die, gone is the manatee's favorite food source. They may start to nosh on other plants that don't fortify them the same way, or make do with less food (manatees should eat somewhere around 10% of their body weight per day, which translates to about 100 pounds of grass for an 1,000-pound adult manatee) and begin to lose weight. Over time, this leads to malnutrition and, eventually, starvation, Walsh said.

While climate change is generally warming water temperatures, warmer temperatures can foster the growth of harmful algae, which may kill seagrasses in their favorite warm water oases. So manatees may travel hundreds of miles until they find a new source of food and, hopefully, warm water. But the colder it gets, the more food they'll need to consume to stay warm, Walsh said. If there's less food, they'll succumb more quickly to cold stress -- for their impressive girth, they don't have enough blubber to keep themselves warm when the water temperature drops below 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

What's more, manatees have learned to rely on the warm water outflows from power plants on both coasts of the state -- about two-thirds of all manatees stay warm this way, according to a 2013 estimate. If those plants close as the state transitions to more sustainable energy sources, manatees will lose a reliable haven for warmth, leaving them with few options for wintering, Rose said.

There's also the problem of people: Florida has around 21.4 million residents, according to a 2019 Census Bureau count (a figure that may be higher now, given the number of Northeastern expats who moved down during the pandemic). Couple unimpeded population growth with an infrastructure system the American Society of Civil Engineers described as "deteriorating," and the pressure on water treatment systems in the state can be debilitating.

"Add up starvation, together with red tide, severe cold weather mortality ... these are just absolute catastrophic losses that they may never be able to recover from," Rose said.

Just under 90 manatees have been rescued in 2021 so far, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. But most manatees who've died have not been necropsied, and some of their bodies were too decomposed to study, according to the commission's preliminary mortality report for the year.

© Eva Marie Uzcategui/AFP/Getty Images Boats were once manatees' most fearsome foe. These days, they're one of many.

The last comparable unusual mortality event occurred in 2010, when temperatures in Florida fell to historic lows in a cold snap that proved extremely dangerous for manatees. More than 760 manatees died that year, according to the FWC.

But 2021's count is already approaching that number, and the year isn't even halfway through.

What went wrong in manatees' favorite habitat

Perhaps no ecosystem in Florida is a better example of the dire state of the manatee than the Indian River Lagoon. An ecologically rich estuary that spans more than 150 miles along the East Coast -- enough room for manatees to forage and raise their calves without bumping snouts -- more than one-third of the country's manatees call it home at some point throughout the year.

But just as decades of human-made environmental degradation have caught up with manatees, the Indian River Lagoon is dying, too. An estimated 58% of the estuary's seagrasses have died in the last 11 years, according to the St. Johns River Water Management District, a regulatory agency that oversees the Indian River Lagoon.

Some parts of the lagoon are rife with microplastics, or small pieces of plastic that may never fully break down, even more so than in other well-tread waterways in Florida. A 2018 study found that crabs and oysters in Mosquito Lagoon, part of the Indian River Lagoon system, contained averages of 4.2 and 16.5 microplastic pieces per individual, the highest volume of microplastics recorded in invertebrates at the time.

© Courtesy Sea & Shoreline Sea & Shoreline divers, along with their agency partners and local activists, are dedicated to restoring the habitats where manatees thrive.

As with manatees, the pollution, algal blooms and poor water treatment infrastructure are likely responsible for the Indian River Lagoon's problems, too, says Duane De Freese, marine biologist and executive director of the Indian River Lagoon Council and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program.

Now, parts of the lagoon resemble a graveyard. CNN affiliate WPEC shared photos in early May of manatees washed up on the shore of the Indian River Lagoon, their bodies like deflated balloons. Their bones, picked clean by vultures, were haphazardly strewn across the sand where they'd washed up.

Manatee deaths are simply a "symptom of a system that is under stress and near collapse," De Freese said.

"This is about more than just the environment," he said. "It's about human health, it's about quality of life, it's about the economic vitality of our coastal communities. And if we fail to act in a science-driven way to solve these problems, as the population grows, these problems will grow with it."

And the natural elements that Floridians treasure -- clean water, fresh seafood, tourism, robust fisheries and, naturally, manatees -- will decline along with the environment, he said.

Saving the Indian River Lagoon requires money, which De Freese says is lacking. Though Gov. Ron DeSantis has passed laws like the Clean Waterways Act, which would fund projects to reduce nutrient pollution in vulnerable waters, overhauling the state's water infrastructure requires more than one bill, De Frees said.

But water quality and conservation is becoming a bipartisan issue among Florida lawmakers.

Republican Rep. Brian Mast and Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy introduced a bill in Congress this month that would improve federal funding for research and rehabbing of manatees and other marine life. The Palm Beach Post reported that Florida members of the House of Representatives wrote to President Joe Biden to ask for "robust funding" to support the Everglades, where some manatees spend their winters. Biden has confirmed his proposed infrastructure bill would be used to protect and restore the Everglades and other "major land and water resources."

Although "the ship turns a bit slower" up in Washington, De Frees said, support among lawmakers for cleaning up Florida's waters is good news. Those policies just need to be implemented quickly -- within the next few years, really -- to make a difference.

Novel solutions could be key to saving them

Saving Florida's manatees -- and restoring Florida's water quality -- has inspired a cooperative, occasionally tenuous relationship among manatee advocates and agencies, from Rose's Save the Manatee Club and the US Fish and Wildlife Service to veterinarians like Walsh and even US Geological Survey biologists who study the way polluted water impacts manatee health.

Also a recent addition to that crew -- farmers.

Jim Anderson lives in Ruskin, a coastal community known best for its tomato crops (and tomato festival). But about 25 years ago, after he noticed nearby seagrass beds were being torn up by boat propellers, Anderson switched from farming sod to farming seagrasses.

Since then, Anderson has operated a seagrass nursery for his business, Sea & Shoreline. He and his team grow half a million plants of 150 varieties, suitable for freshwater and saltwater. Seagrass restoration is a new industry in the state, and there's room for collaborators, he said.

In regions of freshwater and saltwater habitats where seagrass cover is sparse, Sea & Shoreline will plant seagrasses and place a protective cage over them to keep hungry manatees from eating them before they've taken root. Every few weeks, a dive team cleans the cage and mows the grass to foster its growth, he said.

Anderson and his team have found success already in another favorite spot of manatees -- Crystal River in western Florida. Sea & Shoreline has planted over 50 acres of seagrass there in the last four years and vacuumed up the toxic algal blooms. It's restored the pristine water clarity that lent the river its name, he said.

"It's expensive to do it, but how expensive is our water quality?" he said.

The prognosis of Florida's beloved 'sea cow'

Manatees would prefer not to fight for survival. They float through the water unrushed, soaking up their surroundings like bulbous gray sponges with snouts. Unlike the more aggressive dolphins or sharks of Florida, manatees do not provoke conflict. They'd rather flee, almost apologetically, than upset another creature.

But manatees have had to fight for decades. It's a battle they've won before through persistent conservation efforts, though humans are as much their downfall as their salvation.

Rose, now 70, has spent the last 40 years advocating on behalf of the "sea cows." He's seen their numbers shrink to less than 1,000 and bounce back again. Rose is "not willing to accept that we can't fix this," he said.

"But, I will tell you," he said, "it's going to be really, really hard."

Having delayed his retirement indefinitely to continue his work, Rose has some hope for the manatee's survival. Walsh and De Freese do too, and Anderson is optimistic that his seagrass restoration will continue to pay off for Florida's sea cow.

They're but four men in the campaign for manatees' survival. Local activists, Floridians who treasure their coasts and the life that relies on clean water, have kept the heat on officials to help save manatees. Their work continues until the day manatees can graze and swim and feel comfortable in the home they share with humans -- a day, manatee defenders hope, that will come while manatees still have some fight left.

'We can’t ignore this': UFO sightings spark concern from more than just conspiracy theorists

Joel Shannon, USA TODAY 

When Daniel Drezner wrote about UFOs in 2019, he worried the column could tank his credibility, both as a professor of international politics and as a columnist.


Duration 1:00
Congress-sanctioned UFO report to detail unexplainable 'sightings all over the world'
Click to expand

But he said the evidence had been mounting for awhile. Among the most striking: A video showing a Navy fighter jet locking onto a mysterious target streaking across the sky as a pilot incredulously asks "What is that, man?”

The video is authentic, the Navy has said without offering an explanation.

That video helped prompt Drezner to join an increasingly mainstream group of academics, journalists, intelligence officials and politicians who say acknowledging UFOs exist doesn't mean embracing conspiracy theories or even believing in extraterrestrial life.

While UFOs are often synonymous with aliens in pop culture, those who study the phenomenon say UFOs should be understood by their literal name: unidentified flying objects. Once identified, they may have a mundane explanation — weather balloons, drones or the planet Venus.

But for now, some sightings don't yet have widely accepted explanations, including examples documented on camera, by multiple witnesses and with radar. Those most concerned about the phenomenon say some sightings suggest advanced craft performing maneuvers that should not be physically possible.

The view has been further bolstered by comments from high-level figures, including former President Barack Obama, who recently acknowledged that "there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are. We can't explain how they move, their trajectory."

That's led people like Drezner to conclude more bluntly: “What I do know is that UFOs exist … we can’t ignore this any more,” he said.

May 19: Congress-sanctioned UFO report to detail unexplainable 'sightings all over the world'

The view has been thrust into the spotlight recently, with news that an unclassified Pentagon report on UFOs is soon headed to Congress.

“There’s no question anymore that UFOs are real,” author and independent journalist Leslie Kean told USA TODAY. Kean has co-written several New York Times articles on UFOs. Those reports, which included footage later confirmed by the Navy, are often cited as the beginning of a recent surge in the public's UFO interest.

© Provided by USA TODAY Congress-sanctioned UFO report to detail unexplainable 'sightings all over the world'

After studying the phenomenon for over two decades, she said she's open to connecting UFOs with extraterrestrial life, but she's quick to distance herself from conspiracy theorists. The people who have researched UFOs the most tend to be "agnostic about what they are," she said.

She described the connection between UFOs and extraterrestrial life as an easy one for many people to make, aided by decades of films and books on the subject. But she hopes the growing interest in the topic will prompt study from scientists who may offer other explanations.

The subject is one of mankind's favorite fascinations. History, and Wikipedia, are replete with UFO sightings, dating back to 1440 B.C. when "fiery disks" were allegedly seen over the skies of Egypt. But some have come to doubt the papyrus the sighting was written on.

Opinion: Why you should be skeptical of recent reports on UFO sightings

Fast-forward 3,000 years, and hundreds, if not thousands, of sightings have been chronicled. Most end up on the scrap heap of galactic research, with explanations ranging from fireflies on windshields to crop dusters in the high sun to the Aurora Borealis on a clear night.

But some sightings endure to challenge imagination and explanation, such as the so-called "Gorman Dogfight" of 1948, when an Air Force captain said with certainty he sighted and aggressively pursued a UFO in the skies over Fargo, North Dakota, before the mysterious craft went into a steep vertical climb that outmaneuvered his P-51 Mustang aircraft. A year later, the Air Force concluded the pilot had been chasing a lighted weather balloon.

In recent years, "the issue itself has acquired a level of credibility," said Kean, citing a variety of reasons. Politicians from both parties have expressed national security concerns. The videos published by the Times provided new evidence. Pilots began talking on the record about their experiences.

Even so, people pushing for more study of UFOs still face stigma. When Luis Elizondo told "60 Minutes" this year that the government has been studying UFOs, Bill Whitaker reminded the former Pentagon official, “It sounds nutty, wacky.”

“I don’t care about the stigma and taboo,” Elizondo, former director of the Defense Department's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, told USA TODAY. There's “something in our skies … that we don’t have an answer for."

But skeptics say evidence and experience suggest the concern about UFOs is overblown. “There’s all sorts of things we don’t understand,” Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, told USA TODAY.

He noted, for example, that some rules of physics have recently been called into question by new research without a public outcry. It's not alarming to acknowledge humans encounter things they don't understand, he said.

Shostak said a number of UFO sightings don't yet have an adequate explanations, but whatever the explanation is, it’s likely less interesting than an alien invasion.

Some recent videos might seem more fantastic then they really are due to processing artifacts, optical illusions and focusing issues, a recent USA TODAY opinion piece argued.

Although Shostak researches the possibility of extraterrestrial life, he said it's most likely found among the stars, not floating in our skies.

UFO sightings have been happening for decades and don't appear to be endangering the public or causing harm, he said: “They are irrelevant … they don’t change the daily news at all.”

Even if a fantastic explanation for UFOs exists, it will likely be an uphill battle to convince many people to believe it, according to Gleb Tsipursky, who holds a Ph.D. in the history of behavioral science and has written about cognitive biases and truth in politics.

The public tends to reject concepts that challenge the status quo, Tsipursky said. It's the same reason it took so long for many people to realize that COVID-19 was a historic pandemic and why so many people dismissed Donald Trump's viability as a politician: “What doesn’t fit our worldview gets filtered out," Tsipursky said.

Elizondo is quick to connect UFOs to other paradigm-shifting discoveries that started at the edges of society and quickly met with pushback and mockery. Einstein met resistance to his theories, which later redefined our understanding of space and time, Elizondo noted.

Every time we think we understand nature, “we’re proven wrong," he said.

"The universe is constantly revealing herself."

Contributing: Dustin Barnes and Mike James, USA TODAY; The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'We can’t ignore this': UFO sightings spark concern from more than just conspiracy theorists

No longer confined to the fringe, UFO theories move into the mainstream

Issued on: 27/05/2021 -

This video grab image obtained April 28, 2020 courtesy of the US Department of Defence shows part of an unclassified video taken by Navy pilots that have circulated for years showing interactions with "unidentified aerial phenomena". © Handout, AFP

Text by: Monique El-FaizyFollow

The subject of UFOs in the US is getting serious treatment from mainstream media and heavyweight politicians. Next month Congress is set to review a report from the director of national intelligence about the government’s secret files on the subject.

UFOs are now serious business.

So serious, in fact, that they have been given a new name. No longer called UFOs, or Unidentified Flying Objects, a term often associated with people of questionable sanity, the mysterious objects that have been reported by the hundreds, are now the source of discussion in serious scientific circles and have been rebaptised with the more serious-sounding moniker Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs.

Last June, officials made public the existence of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, housed within the Office of Naval Intelligence. Six months later, the 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act asked the director of national intelligence work and the secretary of defence to put together a report detailing everything the government knows about UAPs.

The report, which Congress is expected to review in June, will draw on classified military files and will address decades of sightings and videos, which date back to the 1940s. That such objects exist is increasingly becoming gospel; Officials from former president Barack Obama to Senator Marco Rubio to former senate majority leader Harry Reid are publicly saying that earth has been visited by flying objects that we don’t understand.

"What is true – and I'm actually being serious here – is that there's footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are,” Obama told “The Late Late Show” on May 17. “We can’t explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern.”

Also that month, the CBS magazine show “60 Minutes” interviewed two Navy pilots from the USS Nimitz who were diverted in 2004 to investigate an peculiar radar signal. They described seeing an object shaped like a Tic Tac that was able to move straight up and down at inexplicable speeds.

In the same broadcast, Christopher Mellon, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defence for intelligence under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said the government had observed on radar objects capable of manouvres that could not be approximated. “There’s nothing that we can build that would be strong enough to endure that amount of force in acceleration,” he said.

In an interview with Fox News a month earlier, former intelligence director John Ratcliffe said there have been far more sightings than the public is aware of and described the phenomena like this: “We are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery, that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are hard to replicate, that we don’t have the technology for or are traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.”

Encounters of which kind?

The government has slowly been opening up about UAP sightings for more than a year. In April 2020 the Pentagon released three short videos showing such objects, and earlier this year Reid said the footage “only scratches the surface of research and materials available".

Reid called for further investigation. “The US needs to take a serious scientific look at this and any potential national security implications,” he said. “The American people deserve to be informed.”

French officials went public with stories of similar sightings decades ago. In 1999 a group of a dozen retired French generals and other experts issued a report called “UFOs and Defence: For What Must we Prepare Ourselves?”

What officials and scientists aren’t saying is that these are aliens coming from another planet to visit us. They simply don’t know what these objects are, they say. The discussion is still largely couched in distinctly concrete terms and centers around the concern that these craft may represent a threat from enemies here on earth.

At least one official has been willing to go further, though. In December 2020, Haim Eshed, the former head of the space directorate of the Israeli Defence Ministry, told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper that humans have been in contact with extraterrestrials and have signed a co-operation accord with them.

“There is an agreement between the US government and the aliens,” he told the newspaper. "They signed a contract with us to do experiments here."

Former president Donald Trump was in on the secret, he said, and had been “on the verge of revealing” it but was asked not to due to fears of “mass hysteria”.

Eshed’s assertion doesn’t seem to represent the consensus view in Israel. The chairman of the country’s Space Agency, Isaac Ben-Israel, told the Times of Israel that while the scientific community thinks the chances that there is life in outer space is “considerable, not small,” he doesn’t believe “there were any physical encounters between us and aliens".

NBC News followed up on Eshed’s statements about the agreement with aliens with the White House, Israeli officials and the Pentagon, but were unable to get a comment from any of them. A NASA spokesperson told NBC that the agency was searching for life in the universe, but had not yet found it.

Flying saucer watchers who are hoping for clear answers from the government are likely to be disappointed. While the report presented to Congress is expected to be detailed, the public will be given only the unclassified version, which is likely to be far less complete.

The Omni Dallas hotel is hosting a QAnon conference starring Michael Flynn

salarshani@businessinsider.com (Sarah Al-Arshani)

© SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

A four-day QAnon conference called the For God & Country Patriot Roundup is being hosted in Dallas.

Keynotes include former national security advisor Michael Flynn and attorney Sidney Powell.

Guests are being hosted at the Omni Dallas Hotel.

The Omni Dallas Hotel is hosting guests for a four-day QAnon conference called For God & Country Patriot Roundup which will feature prominent conservatives including former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

The conference began on Friday with a VIP meet-and-greet reception at the hotel's Texas Spice restaurant and will last through Memorial Day.

According to the events site, keynote speakers include Flynn, attorney Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and George Papadopoulos.

The Omni has given the group a discount for those who reserve a room, the event's site said.

A receptionist told Insider that the hotel was sold out but refused to say if it was sold out for this event and did not provide any additional information.

"Although this has been a time of uncertainty for many, it is also a time of excitement as we witness political history being made before our eyes," says the event website. "What better time and place to get together to fellowship and celebrate with your Patriot family?!?"

Flynn was former President Donald Trump's national security advisor for less than a month and resigned over reports that he had lied about his contact with a Russian official.

In December 2017 he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russia's ambassador to the US at the time. Trump eventually pardoned him late last year.

Insider's Rachel E. Greenspan reported that after his pardon Flynn has frown as a prominent QAnon figure and deepened his ties to figures like Powell.

Photos from the event posted on Twitter by Alex Kaplan, a senior researcher at Media Matters for America, show Flynn helping auction what appears to be a flag quilt with a "Q" embroidered on it.

Kaplan said organizers of the conference said Flynn, Wood, and Mike Lindell would all sign.

Flynn and other keynote speakers including Powell have embraced conspiracy theories that the election was stolen from Trump.

Last week, Flynn said he believed that the COVID-19 pandemic was fabricated to distract from the 2020 election.

"Why? Because everything, everything, and this is my truth, what I believe, everything is a distraction to what happened on November 3," he continued. "Everything we hear about Covid, and how Covid started before November 3, it is all meant to control, it is all meant to gain control of a society to be able to force decisions on society, instead of allowing 'we the people' to make decisions."

Powell waged a number of lawsuits to try and overturn the election results. Dominion Voting Systems is suing him for $1.3 billion in damages in a defamation lawsuit after she repeatedly falsely claimed their voting machines were rigged.

Read the original article on Business Insider

SERVICE CHARGES
Canada’s big banks are seeing their profits soar. Here’s how they’re making their money


It was a big week for Canada’s banks as five of the country’s largest lenders reported sizable second-quarter profits.

Bank buildings are photographed in Toronto's financial district on June 27, 2018. CEOs representing more than 200 Canadian organizations, including three of Canada's big banks, have signed up to support the BlackNorth Initiative against systemic racism. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Tijana Martin

The profit surges were fuelled, in large part, by reducing the amount of money set aside for loans that could go bad – also known as provisions for credit losses.

What this means is that consumers and businesses haven’t been defaulting on their loans as much as anticipated — they’ve been largely staying on top of their debt amid ongoing government COVID-19 pandemic supports.


And while some of the bank CEOs seem optimistic about the country’s economic future as vaccine campaigns ramp up, they also remain cautious, acknowledging we’re not on the other side of the pandemic just yet.

Here’s a breakdown of how and where the banks made their money in the latest quarter, save for Bank of Nova Scotia, which reports its results on Tuesday.

TD Bank Group saw its profit more than double compared with a year ago as the bank recovered some of the money it set aside for loans that could go bad.

TD reported a $377-million recovery of credit losses compared with a provision for credit losses of $3.2 billion a year ago.

CEO Bharat Masrani said TD’s strong results reflected improving economic conditions, its approach to managing risk and the strength of its diversified businesses.

“While we are encouraged by the progress being made on vaccinations, COVID-19 continues to be a factor in our lives and our focus remains on the safety of our people and on supporting the evolving needs of our customers and clients," Masrani said.

Revenue at TD totalled $10.2 billion, which was down from $10.5 billion in the same quarter last year.

The biggest profit surge was seen in its Canadian retail business, which includes residential mortgages, credit cards and commercial banking. That segment of the business earned 86 per cent more than in the same quarter last year.

© Provided by Global News TD Q2

Meanwhile, RBC, Canada’s biggest bank, on Thursday reported a profit of about $4 billion for the quarter, up from $1.48 billion a year earlier.

"The strong momentum we've achieved in the first half of 2021 reflects our focused strategy to deliver exceptional experiences and create more value for clients,” RBC CEO Dave McKay said in a statement.

"While there is reason for optimism as recovery continues to take hold, we know the pandemic's path forward still poses challenges."

RBC also reversed $96 million of its provisions for credit losses in Q2 compared with the $2.83 billion it set aside a year ago at the start of the pandemic.

Revenue totalled $11.62 billion, up from $10.33 billion in the same quarter last year.

RBC saw the biggest earnings gain in its wealth management business -- which includes transaction accounts and investment products, like mutual funds -- where profits surged 63 per cent compared to the same quarter in 2020

.

© Provided by Global News RBC Q2 earnings

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce more than tripled its second-quarter profit, earning $1.65 billion, up from a profit of $392 million a year ago. The increase came as the money the bank set aside for bad loans fell to $32 million compared with $1.41 billion in the same quarter last year at the onset of the pandemic.

CIBC’s chief executive said that while the pandemic isn’t yet over, he’s expecting the country to see an economic boost as more people become vaccinated.

"Our neighbours to the south ... are enjoying an economic boost that we have yet to fully experience here in Canada," Victor Dodig told analysts on a Thursday call.

"While we're not on the other side of this pandemic yet, there's every reason to be optimistic."

Total revenue grew to $4.93 billion from $4.58 billion in the same quarter last year. The biggest income gains were in the U.S. commercial and wealth and capital markets businesses.

© Provided by Global News CIBC Q2

Bank of Montreal kicked off bank earnings Wednesday by posting a profit of $1.3 billion – more than double what it reported a year earlier.

The increase came as BMO’s total provision for credit losses fell to $60 million compared with $1.1 billion in the same quarter last year.

Revenue for Q2 was nearly $6.1 billion, up from almost $5.3 billion a year ago.

"This quarter, we continued to deliver very strong results with all of our businesses performing well," BMO chief executive Darryl White said in a statement Wednesday.

"We are executing against a consistent, purpose-driven strategy - which for us means winning together with our customers, our communities, our employees and our shareholders."

The biggest profit gains were seen in the Canadian personal and commercial banking segment, which includes residential mortgages, commercial loans and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs).

 Provided by Global News BMO Q2

Montreal-based National Bank of Canada on Friday reported a profit of $801 million – more than double compared to a year ago.

"Our solid results once again reflect the fact that we have made the right strategic choices and have built a strong, diversified and agile franchise," National Bank CEO Louis Vachon said in a statement.

Provisions for credit losses in the quarter fell to $5 million compared with $504 million in the same quarter last year.

Revenue totalled nearly $2.2 billion, up from $2.0 billion in the same quarter a year ago.

The bank's personal and commercial banking division saw the biggest profit gains, earning $321 million compared with $56 million a year ago when it was hurt by higher provisions for credit losses due to the economic downturn.

© Provided by Global News National Bank Q2

—With files from The Canadian Press

Kamloops discovery prompts call for formal framework to investigate mass graves

Simon Little 

GLOBAL NEWS

The discovery of a mass grave at a former Kamloops residential school highlights the need for a formal, legal and human rights framework to investigate similar sites in Canada, says a B.C. legal scholar and advocate.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Snucins The former Kamloops Indian Residential School is seen on Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation in Kamloops, B.C. on Thursday, May 27, 2021. The remains of 215 children have been found buried on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond heads the University of British Columbia's Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, and formerly served as the province's advocate for children and youth.

"A mass grave is a crime scene, it is not a historic site or a heritage site," Turpel-Lafond told Global News.

"It is well and past the time that Canada and provinces, they need to stop treating the finding of human remains of Indigenous people as sort of a heritage issue."

READ MORE: Grief, sorrow after discovery of 215 bodies, unmarked graves at former B.C. residential school site

The Kamloops Indian Residential School is but one of many where Turpel-Lafond says Indigenous people have reported children disappearing, but have been given little or no state support to investigate.

That has left First Nations to spearhead the work themselves, potentially with the support of a few academics and intermittent grants.

"The United Nations has a framework to deal with mass unmarked graves in such situations like Rwanda and other places around the world," she said.

"We may have to turn to some of those international principles so that we can make sure we do the right thing here."

Memorial held at Vancouver Art Gallery for children who died at residential schools"

Turpel-Lafond is calling on the federal government to immediately appoint a special rapporteur to bring international standards to the issue in Canada.

Legislation and funding to create a framework that will ensure investigations happen, are done correctly, and are done in a way that incorporates Indigenous leadership while respecting cultural safety and protocols, are also needed, she said.

"There are fundamental human rights issues here that we have to consider -- the right to life, were these children's right to life appropriately respected? I mean, every indication points to it that they were not," she said.

Macabre discovery: Remains of 215 children found at former B.C. residential school

"What about the disappearance? How can you just disappear like this? What kind of last rites and dignified treatment was given to these children? Their parents and families maybe were not notified, probably were not. And they've just simply been missing.

Read more: Work underway for forensics experts to identify and repatriate B.C. school remains

"Indigenous people have to have a right to a proper investigation, a remedy and reparation, respect culture and beliefs here. But fundamentally, what we're talking about is the importance of the right to truth."

State support, she added, would mean Indigenous peoples and survivors of the residential school system would not be forced to shoulder the burden of an inevitably re-traumatizing investigation, she added.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc said Thursday that ground-penetrating radar had confirmed the remains of at least 215 children at the site of the former residential school.

Indigenous and political leaders react to residential school discovery


The band is now laying the groundwork for what will likely be a multi-year process of identifying, repatriating and telling the stories of the children. That effort could involve the B.C. Coroners service, the Royal B.C. Museum and forensics experts.

The Kamloops residential school operated between 1890 and 1969. The federal government took over the facility’s operation from the Catholic Church and ran it as a day school until it closed in 1978.

The National Truth and Reconciliation Commission has records of at least 51 children dying at the school between 1915 and 1963.

-With files from the Canadian Press

More remains expected to be found as survey at Tk'emlups continues

A detailed report is forthcoming on the discovery of human remains buried on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, according to Tk’emlups te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir.

On Thursday, May 27, the band revealed it had discovered the remains of 215 Indigenous children who were students of the school — which operated between 1890 and 1977 — using ground-penetrating radar to survey the area over the Victoria Day long weekend.

The band is still working with a radar specialist to complete a survey of the grounds and expects to find more remains, given that the initial discovery was made surveying just a portion of the property.

Tk’emlups anticipates having a full report ready by mid-June — one Casimir said will be shared publicly, but not until it has been disclosed to its membership and other local First Nations chiefs.

She said the band will also be looking into what it can do to repatriate the remains and honour the children found and the families impacted.

Asked if it will be possible to determine how the 215 children died, Casimir said it’s too early to tell. The band has said, however, some of the remains are from children as young as three years of age.

To the band’s knowledge, these are undocumented deaths, but it is working with the Royal B.C. Museum and other groups to determine if there are any existing records of them. The band is also working with the BC Coroners Service and engaging the home communities of students who attended the school to determine if any historical missing persons may be a match.

There are documented deaths of students at the school. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba has on its website a list of the names of 52 children who died while at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The list of deaths range in dates from 1900 to 1971 and are part of the centre’s Missing Children Project. The children’s names are not accompanied by their ages.

In a brief interview with KTW amidst a busy Friday as the news has garnered national and international attention, Casimir described the discovery as “unbelievable.”

She said the day following the announcement was spent sharing further information on the investigation with chiefs of the Secwépemculew and throughout B.C. and discussing what the next steps could look like.

Discussions with chiefs on Friday revealed that the home communities of students who attended the school stretched not only across B.C., but into the Yukon and Alberta, as well.

On Tuesday, May 31, Casimir said, the band will have a meeting with its membership to share more information with them.

“We know that we’re going to be looking at ceremony, having prayers and being able to support each other emotionally,” Casimir said, noting there have been many supports put in place for its members who were triggered by the news.

According to the band, there has been an understanding in its community that the mass burial site existed and work to confirm it has been done in the past, through digs and early versions of ground-penetrating radar — but that was cost- and time-prohibitive. Initial efforts were carried out in the early 2000s.

With access to the latest technology, a breakthrough finally came via Tk’emlups’ administration applying for the Pathways to Healing grant. This latest work was accomplished by the band’s Language and Culture Department, along with ceremonial Knowledge Keepers.

Following the discovery, chiefs from other communities that were host to a residential schools have contacted Tk’emlups for information so they can conduct their own ground-penetrating radar surveys.

There was an outpouring of sorrow and support on Friday as people gathered at Moccasin Square Gardens and at a memorial outside the former residential school building, where flowers were laid and nearby trees decorated.

Asked for her opinion as to whether the former residential school should be torn down, given its history, Casimir did not wish to answer. Casimir also declined to comment on the Catholic Church’s response to the discovery.

The Kamloops Indian Residential School was opened under Roman Catholic administration in 1890 and was at one point the largest school in the Indian Affairs residential school system. Enrolment peaked in the early 1950s at 500. In 1969, the federal government took over administration of the school, which no longer provided classes, and operated it as residence for students attending local day schools until 1977, when it was closed.

Michael Potestio, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Kamloops This Week

Flags on federal buildings being lowered in memory of Kamloops residential school victims

CBC/Radio-Canada 1 hour ago

© Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press The Peace Tower flag in Ottawa and flags at all other federal buildings across the country will soon fly at half-mast, following the discovery of 215 victims of residential schools in Kamloops, B.C.

The Canadian flag at the Peace Tower in Ottawa was lowered to half-mast on Sunday, following the discovery of the bodies of 215 children at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

The Department of Canadian Heritage said flags at all federal buildings and establishments across Canada would be lowered until further notice "in memory of the thousands of children who were sent to residential schools, for those who never returned and in honour of the families whose lives were forever changed."

The bodies of the 215 children were discovered during a search of the grounds of the former residential school, the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced Thursday. A statement from the First Nation said that the missing children, some as young as three years old, were undocumented deaths.


Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir told CBC's Daybreak Kamloops on Friday that more than symbolic gestures are needed to address the tragedy.

"It's all good and well for the federal government to make gestures of goodwill and support regarding the tragedy," Casimir said. "There is an important ownership and accountability to both Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc and all communities and families that are affected. And that needs to happen and take place."

Flags lowered across the country

Flags across the country have also been lowered or will be lowered in honour of the children, including at the British Columbia legislature, the Manitoba legislature and Ottawa's city hall.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said on Twitter on Sunday that flags at Ottawa's city hall would remain at half-mast "for one hour for every child whose life was taken."

B.C. Premier John Horgan issued a statement Friday on the discovery.

"This is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. And it is a stark example of the violence the Canadian residential school system inflicted upon Indigenous peoples and how the consequences of these atrocities continue to this day," he said.

A National Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. Emotional and crisis referral services can be accessed by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866 925-4419.

 Montreal artist creates mural to fight racism

Duration: 02:35 

Artist Patrick Bachand, also known as Patman, decided to produce a mural in Montreal depicting aspects of anti-Black racism, partly to mark the first anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. Phil Carpenter has more

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